Past Events

The Case for Reparations

Jun 12, 2014 • 7:00 pm

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Just days before the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, will sit down with Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss Coates’ provocative June cover story making the case for reparations. The product of nearly two years of reporting, the piece argues that a debt has accrued after centuries of slavery — a debt that has only been deepened by segregation, discrimination, and racist housing policies that persist to this day.

Goldberg, also an Atlantic national correspondent, is himself an expert on the subject of reparations. For many years, he covered the controversies surrounding reparations to Jews victimized by Nazi Germany, and by Swiss and German banks, during the Holocaust. This hour-long interview will focus on Coates’ reporting journey, why he focused his investigation on Chicago’s West Side, and what the public response to his story says about the country’s readiness to contend with the consequences of our history of racism.​